Different …ISMS I’ve looked at from the early 20th century:
CUBISM, FAUVISM, DADAISM, DE STIJL, RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM, SUPREMATISM, FUTURISM, SURREALISM, EXPRESSIONISM.
I will be analysing cubism, futurism and surrealism, looking at the manifesto, and how they are united together.
cubism
Art Examples (mostly Pablo Picasso):
Photography examples ( DAVID HOCKNEY):
About Cubism:
Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It transformed everyday objects, landscapes, and people into geometric shapes.
The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honored theories that art should imitate nature.
By using cubes instead of curved lines, the artist is able to distort the image, creating an illusions and changing the perspective. Cubists believed they could give the viewer a more accurate understanding of an object, landscape or person by showing it from different angles or viewpoints, so they used flat geometric shapes to represent the different sides and angles of the objects. By doing this, they could suggest three-dimensional qualities and structure without using techniques such as perspective and shading.
surrealism:
About Surrealism:
The poet Guilliame Apollinaire first coined the term “Surreal” in reference to the idea of an independent reality, existing “beneath” our conscious reality.
Surrealism started with the artist Andre Breton back in the 1920s. He was interesting in the dreams and the unconscious mind, balancing this with the rational vision of life. Many surrealist artists have used automatic drawing (creating art without conscious thought) or writing to unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds. Others have wanted to depict dream worlds or hidden psychological tensions.
In many instances, these artists have turned to political activism. In this way, the revolutionary concepts encouraged by Surrealism has led the movement to be seen as a way of life.
Beginnings of Surrealism
Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement (formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war), which was also in rebellion against middle-class complacency. Artistic influences, however, came from many different sources. The most immediate influence for several of the Surrealists was Giorgio de Chirico, their contemporary who, like them, used bizarre imagery with unsettling juxtapositions (and his Metaphysical Painting movement). They were also drawn to artists from the recent past who were interested in primitivism, the naïve, or fantastical imagery, even artists from as far back as the Renaissance.https://www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/.
How to take Surrealism photographs
below are some Ideas I have to create surrealist photography:
- Photomontage
- Choice of Color
- Floating the Subject
- creating interesting perspectives
- using reflection
- multiple exposures
- distortion
By using unconventional techniques, like the ones above, surrealist photographers turned a previously mechanical tool into a medium via which they could express the avant-garde framework of the surrealist movement.
Futurism:
About Futurism:
‘we will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries’
Above is a quote by by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. He started the movement and among modernist movements futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past. This was because in Italy the weight of past culture was felt as particularly oppressive.
Futurist painting used elements of neo-impressionism and cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life. (tate)
How I will use these movements:
By doing research into these movements, I have been able to find more inspiration for the topic of union. For example, I can use surrealism to talk about the union between the conscious and unconscious mind through photography, as well as analyse artists like Man Ray to further add to my studies. I can also look at the union between past, present and future with the Futurism art movement, researching further into Italian history potentially using my Italian relatives to help me.